LOLology 101

Oftentimes I find myself doubled over in hearty laughter–over a good joke by a friend, or a particularly rich episode of America's Funniest Wild Animal Maulings, or the sight of a portly child stuck in a doorway–when I suddenly pause to ask myself, why do we laugh? What evolutionary advantage does our species gain by being able to take convulsive physical pleasure in Oscar Wilde's witticisms, or Buster Keaton's physical comedy, or John McCain's gorilla-rape jokes?

Well, I'm not alone in wondering. In fact, an article in Intelligent Life magazine confirms that "after millennia of untested speculation by armchair
thinkers, moves are afoot to bring the study of laughter into the
mainstream of experimental psychology." For example, one researcher chronicled a variety of experiments for a recent textbook on the subject:

Blindfolded subjects are tickled by
experimenters who they are told are machines. The sexual banter in an
all-night diner in upstate New York is surreptitiously observed. People
study cartoons with pens stuck in their mouths

–I know, I had to read that part twice, too. It's "pens."

…with pens stuck in their mouths (to contract the facial muscles
associated with smiling). An experimenter "accidentally" spills hot tea
on herself when a jack-in-the-box erupts nearby.

Spills tea on herself! Somebody get that lady a show on Comedy Central. In any case, the experiments were detailed in Dr. Rod Martin's book, which I believe was titled I Am Too a Real Scientist.

However, recent studies did turn up one bit of less-than-hilarious news for comedy fans:

… [I]t appears that cheerful people actually live
less long than their gloomier peers, perhaps because they are too jolly
to worry about their aches and pains. It may be true, as the proverb
says, that he who laughs last laughs longest. But it seems that he who
laughs longest does not last.

So laughing less is actually better for your health? Yet another piece of good press for The Love Guru!